A stochastic subcellular oscillator in bacteria
The Spo0J/Soj system in Bacillus subtilis, implicated in transcriptional
regulation and chromosome segregation, undergoes highly unusual dynamics.
Spo0J is condensed into tight foci on the nucleoids while Soj relocates
highly irregularly from nucleoid to nucleoid. We develop a mathematical
model of this system showing that stochasticity is a critical element of
the dynamics. In order to understand the behaviour of filamentous mutants
we also introduce nucleoid-polar shuttling, a novel protein localization
mechanism. This system is an excellent example of the self-organised
pattern-forming dynamics of proteins inside cells.
Vincent Moulton
© 2005, CBL
Computational Biology Laboratory,
School of Computing Sciences,
University of East Anglia,
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK.